The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

[This is my most recent piece for Asia Times. It can be reposted if AT is credited and a link is included to the AT site.]

The question
before the People's Republic of China (PRC)
leadership is how badly it misplayed its hand on
Syria. Or did it? Certainly, the solution
advocated by Russia and China - a coordinated
international initiative to sideline the
insurrection in favor of a negotiated political
settlement between the Assad regime and its
domestic opponents - is a bloody shambles.

As articulated in the Annan plan, it might
have been a workable, even desirable option for
the Syrian people as well as the Assad regime.

But Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey were
determined not to let it happen. And the United
States, in another case of the Middle Eastern tail
wagging the American dog, has downsized its dreams of
liberal-democratic revolution for the reality of
regime collapse driven in significant part by
domestic thugs and opportunists, money and arms
funneled in by conservative Gulf regimes, violent
Islamist adventurism, and neo-Ottoman overreach by
Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Erdogan.

But
a funny thing happened last week. The Assad regime
didn't collapse, despite an orchestrated,
nation-wide assault (coordinated, we can assume,
by the crack strategists of the international
anti-Assad coalition): a decapitating terrorist
bombing in the national security directorate,
near-simultaneous armed uprisings in the main
regime strongholds of Damascus and Aleppo, and the
seizure of many of Syria's official border
crossings with Iraq and Turkey.

The border
adventures revealed some holes in the insurgents'
game, as far as showing their ability to operate
independently outside of their strongholds to hold
territory, and in the vital area of image
management.

Juan Cole of the University of
Michigan laid out the big picture strategic
thinking behind some of the border seizures on his
blog, Informed Comment:

If the FSA can take the third
crossing from Iraq, at Walid, they can control
truck traffic into Syria from Iraq, starving the
regime. The border is long and porous, but big
trucks need metalled roads, which are few and go
through the checkpoints. Some 70% of goods
coming into Syria were coming from Iraq, because
Europe cut off trade with the Baath regime of
Bashar al-Assad. The rebels are increasingly in
a position to block that trade or direct it to
their strongholds. [1]

According to an
Iraqi deputy minister of the interior, the units
that seized the border were perhaps not the
goodwill ambassadors that the Syrian opposition or
Dr Cole might have hoped for:

The top official said Iraqi border
guards had witnessed the Free Syrian Army take
control of a border outpost, detain a Syrian
army lieutenant colonel, and then cut off his
arms and legs.

"Then they executed 22
Syrian soldiers in front of the eyes of Iraqi
soldiers." [2]

They reportedly also
raised the al-Qaeda flag.

The forces
participating in the operation at the Turkish
border crossings were also an interesting bunch -
and certainly not all local Syrian insurgents, as
AFP reported:

By Saturday evening, a group of some
150 foreign fighters describing themselves as
Islamists had taken control of the post.

These fighters were not at the site on
Friday, when rebel fighters captured the post.

Some of the fighters said they belonged
to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), while
others claimed allegiance to the Shura Taliban.
They were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles,
rocket launchers and improvised mines.

The fighters identified themselves as
coming from a number of countries: Algeria,
France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the
United Arab Emirates - and the Russian republic
of Chechnya… [3]

The operation also
had a distinct whiff of Taliban-at-the-Khyber-Pass
about it, as the fighters looted and, in some
cases, torched more than two dozen Turkish trucks,
to the embarrassment of the Erdogan government.

Aside from occupation of frontier posts by
the kind of hardened foreign Islamist fighters
that, before Bashar al-Assad's removal became a
pressing priority, served as the West's ultimate
symbol of terrorism run amok, things have gotten
quite lively at the Syria/Turkish border.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

I
felt considerable surprise and sorrow in learning of the death of Alexander Cockburn.

He
was instrumental in getting me started as a writer. I owe him a great debt of
gratitude for his interest and encouragement, and the platform that he and
Jeffrey St. Clair have given me at the Counterpunch website and newsletter.

When
I wrote, I sometimes imagined Alexander Cockburn as the reader at my shoulder. I think it made me a better, bolder, and more
honest writer.

However,
the biting sense of loss has more to it than the disappearance of a sympathetic
interlocutor, or the knowledge that, despite having reached his “allotted threescore
and ten” and burdened by the physical and emotional miseries of a two-year
battle with cancer, Alexander Cockburn had plenty left in the tank when he
passed on.

Of
course, he had more polemics left to write, articles to edit, contributors to
nurture.

But
I was also brought up short by the thought, if Alexander Cockburn isn’t around
to do these things, who will?Who, in
these difficult times, has the talent, the knowledge, the experience, and his
miraculous combination of engagement, detachment, humor, invective, and
generosity to fill the void?

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

I wrote an article touching on the Shi Fang incident, which I expect will go up on Asia Times shortly. In the article, I referred to various Weibo postings, but didn't link to them or otherwise identify them with the idea that I didn't want to take the chance of complicating the situation of critics/citizen-reporters et. al. by associating them with the hot button "washing China's dirty linen in the international arena" issue.

Judging by what I read today, the "settling of accounts after the autumn harvest" seems to have started. In other words, the central government allowed the incident to be reported in considerable, and considerably inflammatory detail. But now, dissidents and activists who are trying to use the incident to acquire some political traction are being hassled and/or detained and some of their posts are being deleted.

For historical purposes, I'm putting up an album of pictures from one of the Weibo sites as a single image. More than press reports, it gives a pretty clear idea of what happened, and why the incident has ignited anger and revulsion across China. Unfortunately, the image loads up in microscopic form. When I get the time, I'll fiddle with the image and see if I can blow up the individual pictures.